Singing All the Way: Sacrifice—March 19, 2017 Dr

1 Singing All the Way: Sacrifice—March 19, 2017 Dr. Linda Even United Church of Fayetteville 310 E. Genesee St., Fayetteville, NY Music Notes: Today’s Anthem This Sunday, the offertory hymn and the anthem after the sermon share only the text rather than both text and music. It was nearly impossible to find any information on the long meter form of the tune retirement, apart that it comes from the Harmonia Sacra shape-note book. Isaac Watts is the supplier of many hymns set to tunes in the various shape-note books of 18th and 19th Century America. The emotional power of this music owes a great deal to the evocative poetry of these great hymnodists. Imagining your "richest gain" as "but loss," and "pouring contempt" on "all your pride" is a stirring experience in itself. When it is a hymn sung in church, we join with our entire community and sing these words together until the sound of it fills the room. For the offertory, the choir will join the congregation in singing the familiar tune. Following the sermon, you'll hear the hymn set to the shape-note tune as a solo with only sparse accompaniment—a single note on the piano, doubled be the sopranos and altos—slowly singing the first six words of the hymn. The second verse is a simple round between the basses and altos with the same piano accompaniment as the first verse; a unison 'C,’ played at irregular intervals. Everything ornamental has been stripped away and we are left with the text, sung slowly and echoed an octave higher. For the final verse, the complexity finally builds and the alto solo returns and the tenor section now sings in canon at the 4th - they are echoing the solo in what sounds like a different key. The rest of the choir now sings long, slow whole notes on the words "Amazing...love...my soul...my life...my all." For Reflection: Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. Gilbert K. Chesterton Hebrew Scripture: Psalm 51 (portions) Have mercy on me, God, according to your faithful love! Wipe away my wrongdoings according to your great compassion! Wash me completely clean of my guilt; purify me from my sin! Because I know my wrongdoings, my sin is always right in front of me. I’ve sinned against you—you alone. I’ve committed evil in your sight. That’s why you are justified when you render your verdict, completely correct when you issue your judgment. Purify me with hyssop and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and celebration again; let the bones you crushed rejoice once more. Hide your face from my sins; wipe away all my guilty deeds! Create a clean heart for me, God; put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me! Please don’t throw me out of your presence; please don’t take your holy spirit away from me. Return the joy of your salvation to me and sustain me with a willing spirit. Deliver me from violence, God, God of my salvation, so that my tongue can sing of your righteousness. Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will proclaim your praise. You don’t want sacrifices. If I gave an entirely burned offering, you wouldn’t be pleased. A broken spirit is my sacrifice, God. You won’t despise a heart, God, that is broken and crushed Epistle Reading: Philippians 2:3-13 Don’t do anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others. Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus: Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings. When he found himself in the form of a human, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God highly honored him and gave him a name above all names, so that at the name of Jesus everyone in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 2 Therefore, my loved ones, just as you always obey me, not just when I am present but now even more while I am away, carry out your own salvation with fear and trembling. God is the one who enables you both to want and to actually live out his good purposes. Sermon: Singing All the Way: Sacrifice Isaac Watts, author of today’s hymn and anthem, would likely be received at UCF as a kindred spirit for more reasons than his music, though his music would certainly be reason enough. His family and he were part of the “dissenting church” in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. That became a broad term which would eventually include dozens of groups such as Presbyterians, Baptists, Pilgrims, Puritans, Quakers among numerous others. They were in dissent of the Uniformity Act of 1662 which established certain practices, prayers and beliefs of the Anglican Church for all citizens. There was extraordinary variety in the reasons for dissent and the result was a complex religious picture in England and resulting in the places to which many of the dissenters eventually emigrated. Some of the dissenters objected to the state’s role in the administration of the church; some rejected doctrines of the Trinity and original sin; others increasingly embraced the teachings of the Enlightenment and advocated a new kind of religious rationalism. Consequences for non-compliance did not include a death sentence or prison, but did impose social and political consequences. Dissenters were: barred from holding public office, attendance at Oxford and other institutions of higher learning. Dissenters were nonetheless required to have all marriages and ordinations sanctified by Anglican clergy, and to pay all due taxes and support for the Anglican Church. It was in this atmosphere and time that Isaac Watts found himself serving as an ordained dissenter. While he wrote numerous books about logic and other topics, he didn't evidence much interest in many of the theological arguments of his day, but began developing his theory and vision for church music. It has often been said that Watts, as author of nearly 750 hymns, many of which remain popular and powerful in our own time, is considered to be the Father of English hymnody. However, his influence was far more elemental than the sheer volume of his work. He almost single-handedly transformed English congregational singing from psalmody to a more complex and spiritually and emotionally rewarding hymnody. Watts came of age in an era when the congregational music of the Anglican Church, strongly influenced by John Calvin in this regard, was technically known as “psalmody”—psalm verses in metrical settings, led by “song leaders”—what we would today call cantors. As we do, on occasion, the congregation echoed the song leaders, phrase by phrase. The settings, of necessity, often separated sense lines. Let me pause to explain the importance of a sense line. If I were to say the words, "On the night" our mind squirrels would begin to scurry along any number of paths as they attempted to complete the incomplete thought. But if I say, "On the night that he was betrayed," presumably all our squirrels are now scurrying in the same and appropriate direction. Whether spoken or sung, breaks in sense lines can have the same impact. However, Watts’ first objection to psalmody being the entirety of congregational music was a theological one. While he found psalmody spiritually powerful and personally meaningful, given that the psalms predated Christ’s ministry, the texts could not reflect and reveal the “Light and Glory which our Lord Jesus and his Apostles have supplied in the Writings of the New Testament.” He set about to infuse congregational music with a more overt Christianity. He thought that hymns should reflect the themes of scripture and sermon, but need not be rigidly tied to the actual words of scripture. He wrote them to fit the most common meters, allowing them to be sung to a number of tunes, while striving to keep sense lines in a single phrase. He chose New Testament imagery and shaped it with his considerable skill with words. Watts’ texts are theologically complex poems. Today’s hymn and anthem, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, was written for a communion service, and is considered by many to be one of the finest examples of his work, employing sophisticated poetic conventions and techniques and evocative imagery. It also serves to highlight another of Watt’s key goals and the effect of his hymnody (one which Parker's work carries even farther, especially evidenced in today's anthem). The intent was to draw the singer into the emotion, the theology and religious experience through the music. Let's be clear – Watts wasn't thinking of those singers (gesture to choir). He was referring to all of us. Hymns are created for congregational singing and so the goal is to draw each singer—each one of us—closer to the 3 spirituality of the song. That intention invites us to experience the emotion and reflect on the imagery and theology of the hymns we sing with such favor, enthusiasm and love.

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